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Reuters – Global assets of hedge funds may drop to $1.2 trillion by the end of the first quarter, down 35 percent from 2007 as the number of managers decline and funds rely less on strategies that use leverage, a UBS executive said on Tuesday.
"We are gonna see a reduction in hedge fund assets, we are gonna see decline in the number of hedge funds, we are gonna see some strategies that will not work in this environment," Timothy Bell, global head of hedge funds advisory at UBS Wealth Management, told reporters in Singapore.
Hedge funds had assets worth $1.9 trillion at the end of 2007, which peaked at $1.93 trillion in the middle of 2008, according to data from Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research. These assets dropped to $1.4 trillion at the end of 2008.
Forbes – In December, Forbes was a media partner to Markets Media, host of the Global Markets Summit inNew York City. Forbes Intelligent Investing Editor Michael Maiello moderated a hedge fund industry panel that included activist investors Clay Lifflander of Millcap Advisors and Stephen Roseman of Thesis Capital, along with Samuel Hocking, global head of sales for the prime brokerage at BNP Paribas and Kenneth Springer of Corporate Resolutions.
During the discussion, Hocking predicted a 30% failure rate for hedge funds in 2009, rising operating costs and higher margin requirements. Lifflander and Roseman discussed strategies for low-margin investing and the implication of hedge fund failures on shareholder activist strategies. Springer, a former FBI investigator and due diligence expert, revealed the increased scrutiny that hedge fund managers will have to bear.
InvestorDaily- While Australian superannuation funds and institutional investors have discovered hedge funds, their participation is not to the extent of most of their developed market peers.
But the current market downturn may change that behaviour, because the juicy returns they had become used to from the traditional asset classes have disappeared for the moment.
"The industry super funds were early adopters of hedge funds, but for most other dealer groups and institutions, they didn’t have the imperative in 2003-2007 to look fully into alternative assets, because traditional ones were motoring along so well," Lonsec head of investment consulting Amanda Gillespie says.
"When you’ve got investors and advisers looking at the phenomenal returns we’ve seen in traditional markets – up until the last 12 months – it’s been a really hard sell to talk them into making really big allocations to alternatives in that environment. But I think that more of them are ready to look at alternative investment categories now."
